When the researchers amputated both of the heads from the newly twin-headed worm, the headless middle section grew back two heads. In other words, something that happened after the worm was launched into space caused its body to be "reprogrammed" to consider itself to be some sort of new two-headed species.

I'm still not clear from reading the link, were the heads at both ends of the worm or just at one end?

John D wrote:While on the topic of auto safety.... my pet peeve is the number of people (and States) that think we should have seat belts in buses. Buses are safer without seat belts.

Interesting. It always annoyed me that buses did not have seat belts.

Does this equally apply to both greyhound buses zooming across the interstates as it does low speed school buses?

I was looking for a good technical paper on-line, but they are all behind pay walls. There are a few things going on that I can summarize.

1) Buses have a statistically extremely good safety record. Mile per mile they are even safer than flying (which is significantly safer than driving a car). Buses are 40 times less likely to kill you than a car (measured mile-per-mile).

2) With such a good safety record we need to look at what really kills people on a bus. In most cases a seat belt will not help. Usually bus death are caused by very dramatic events such as driving off the road or getting hit by a train. In these cases, seat belts will have limited utility. The purpose of a seat belt is to keep you in the car. Many car deaths (without seat belts used) are caused by ejection. The driver is tossed out of the car before any of the kinetic energy can be dissipated. Keeping you in the car improves your chances of having your kinetic energy dissipated by hitting parts of the car rather than a fucking bridge abutment. Almost no bus deaths are caused by ejection. They are cause by massive impingement into the passenger area. When impingement is the problem, seat belts can actually make the problem worse.

3) There is also a secondary issue of the benefit of rapid egress. Many people have lived to see another day because they could quickly get off a burning bus. Imagine a child in a seat belt trying to escape a fire... not good. Some lives are saved when people quickly exit a bus when it is on train track, on fire, etc.

Some US states require new buses to have belts. There is NO DATA that shows belts are helpful for buses. In fact, they may actually be more dangerous overall. States that require seat belts are doing so because of pressure from ignorant parents and politicians saying "think of the children."

PS - you might ask "Why then, are there seat belts on a plane? A: This is mostly to keep you safe during turbulence. A plane belt can also help by preventing you from sailing across the cabin at high speed in a crash. This is very different than a bus or car.

shoutinghorse wrote:If only she'd shown the same passion during the election campaign, she wouldn't be having to make a deal with the Orangemen now :snooty:

This is what a Trump presidency does to my brain. I read "orangemen" I was left wondering for a moment what May was doing with the Cheeto-in-Charge and his merry gang of pranksters. I need more coffee.

Appropo of nothing much, a friend of mine got his ass royally kicked in a bar in Boston for playing "The Old Orange Flute" in a session.

Eric Clanton ... I've got a feeling the alt-right and people in general will be trolling this guy for many years to come.....that's even if he spends some time in prison being very careful to grip soap properly.

John D wrote:PS - you might ask "Why then, are there seat belts on a plane? A: This is mostly to keep you safe during turbulence. A plane belt can also help by preventing you from sailing across the cabin at high speed in a crash. This is very different than a bus or car.

Also stops passengers making a fucking nuisance of themselves during take off and landing.

CommanderTuvok wrote:Eric Clanton ... I've got a feeling the alt-right and people in general will be trolling this guy for many years to come.....that's even if he spends some time in prison being very careful to grip soap properly.

A Philadelphia woman attending an ACT for America rally in Harrisburg was arrested last weekend when she allegedly struck a Pennsylvania State Police horse in the side of the neck with a flag pole.

According to police, Lisa Joy Simon, 23, was arrested on Saturday after she “used a flag pole with a silver nail at the top of the pole” to strike a police horse named Sampson in the neck at about 11:32 a.m.

Would bringing up the possibility of a blog post being edited after commenting be poisoning the well? I think so. Yet I feel as if I've been snookered, even though I'm not sure. Just sharing general dissatisfaction with current practices around the web.

Really? wrote:
The story goes that she was gangraped at 12 and put weight on as a defense mechanism.

It's not uncommon, especially around the midriff.

But it's also an irrational, unhealthy and ineffective way to process trauma. While one can empathize with someone who struggles with weight, it's harder when that person downplays their extreme morbid obesity as merely a “wildly undisciplined” or "unruly" body.

Gay's writing is widely praised for being moving and profound. Skimming her essays and book excerpts, I find her prose smooth and well-crafted. But her content, despite being frank and unblushing, is ultimately not profound at all, but rather banal.

I used to teach riding certification clinics for mounted police. They love their horses (considered their 'partner' just like another cop) and are super protective of them. Looks like she got the book thrown at her.

NB: She was part of a counter protest of an anti-sharia protest. So, anti-anti-sharia. So, pro-sharia.

Really? wrote:
The story goes that she was gangraped at 12 and put weight on as a defense mechanism.

It's not uncommon, especially around the midriff.

But it's also an irrational, unhealthy and ineffective way to process trauma. While one can empathize with someone who struggles with weight, it's harder when that person downplays their extreme morbid obesity as merely a “wildly undisciplined” or "unruly" body.

Gay's writing is widely praised for being moving and profound. Skimming her essays and book excerpts, I find her prose smooth and well-crafted. But her content, despite being frank and unblushing, is ultimately not profound at all, but rather banal.

Writers like her have a very low bar. And they're not writing so much as they are telling the same fable in a slightly different way.

John D wrote:While on the topic of auto safety.... my pet peeve is the number of people (and States) that think we should have seat belts in buses. Buses are safer without seat belts.

On what do you base this claim? Several studies have suggested that seat-belt would save lives on school buses. A few states require them. The main reason other states haven't done so, as well, is cost.

I haven't looked into the research (if any) for city and/or long-distance buses.

Thanks Kirbmarc. You are a gentleman and a scholar (even if it is of ill repute because you post here).

Do you mind if I post it over there, attributing it to my ex-Muslim, linguist, colleague? Of course it will dox me, but then I only have a nom de internet because all the cool kids had one back in the day.

John D wrote:Usually bus death are caused by very dramatic events such as driving off the road or getting hit by a train. In these cases, seat belts will have limited utility.

Many school-bus injuries occur in roll-overs. In a roll-over, a seat-belt is hugely important, especially when the interior of the vehicle is large. In the recent roll-over in Florida, the injuries came when kids were launched 10 feet across the bus into the fall wall.

John D wrote:Some US states require new buses to have belts. There is NO DATA that shows belts are helpful for buses. In fact, they may actually be more dangerous overall. States that require seat belts are doing so because of pressure from ignorant parents and politicians saying "think of the children."

First, "data" is plural. Second, while there are no prospective or control-group studies (that I know of), post-hoc analysis of crashes has consistently argued in favor of seat-belts in buses. NHTSA came close to mandating three-point belts in buses about 10 years ago, but was "talked" out of it by politicians to avoid the cost.

John D wrote:PS - you might ask "Why then, are there seat belts on a plane? A: This is mostly to keep you safe during turbulence. A plane belt can also help by preventing you from sailing across the cabin at high speed in a crash. This is very different than a bus or car.

Cambridge University examiners are told to avoid using words like “flair”, “brilliance” and “genius” when assessing students’ work because they are associated with men, an academic has revealed.

Lucy Delap, a lecturer in British history at Cambridge University, said that History tutors are discouraged from using these terms because they “carry assumptions of gender inequality”.

“Some of those words, in particular genius, have a very long intellectual history where it has long been associated with qualities culturally assumed to be male”, she said. “Some women are fine with that, but others might find it hard to see themselves in those categories”.

"We want to use language that is transparent," Dr Delap said. "We’re rewriting our first two years of our History degree to create a wider set of paper choices, to make assessment criteria clearer, and to really try and root out the unhelpful and very vague talk of ‘genius’, of ‘brilliance’, of ‘flair’ which carries assumptions of gender inequality and also of class and ethnicity."

Cambridge University examiners are told to avoid using words like “flair”, “brilliance” and “genius” when assessing students’ work because they are associated with men, an academic has revealed.

Lucy Delap, a lecturer in British history at Cambridge University, said that History tutors are discouraged from using these terms because they “carry assumptions of gender inequality”.

“Some of those words, in particular genius, have a very long intellectual history where it has long been associated with qualities culturally assumed to be male”, she said. “Some women are fine with that, but others might find it hard to see themselves in those categories”.

"We want to use language that is transparent," Dr Delap said. "We’re rewriting our first two years of our History degree to create a wider set of paper choices, to make assessment criteria clearer, and to really try and root out the unhelpful and very vague talk of ‘genius’, of ‘brilliance’, of ‘flair’ which carries assumptions of gender inequality and also of class and ethnicity."

Given the wider distribution of IQ for males, we should also avoid "idiot," "moron," and "imbecile," as these are also associated with men. Not that these words are used often (enough) by OxBridge tutors.

In one revealing section, Gay describes the kinds of exhausting considerations that she makes daily because of her size—from googling event venues to see if there are stairs, to worrying about airport seating, to dressing in mostly jeans and cotton shirts, to wondering whether a restaurant’s chairs will have arms that will pinch her. The catalog of small anxieties that interrupt her days is moving, even as it highlights the ways the world doesn’t accommodate women like Gay.

Exhausting. :roll: Well, maybe if she had a more mundane job, like many of us, she wouldn't have to worry about "event venues" or "airport seating." And here's an idea ... maybe cut back on the restaurant outings. These things are all privileges. In a xojane essay, she claims to be a vegetarian.

In one revealing section, Gay describes the kinds of exhausting considerations that she makes daily because of her size—from googling event venues to see if there are stairs, to worrying about airport seating, to dressing in mostly jeans and cotton shirts, to wondering whether a restaurant’s chairs will have arms that will pinch her. The catalog of small anxieties that interrupt her days is moving, even as it highlights the ways the world doesn’t accommodate women like Gay.

Exhausting. :roll: Well, maybe if she had a more mundane job, like many of us, she wouldn't have to worry about "event venues" or "airport seating." And here's an idea ... maybe cut back on the restaurant outings. These things are all privileges. In a xojane essay, she claims to be a vegetarian.

A vegetarian?!?!? From 2014:

I became a vegetarian about three years ago now. People always ask why I became a vegetarian, particularly so late in life. “I’m not a moral vegetarian,” I say. “I just loved meat too much.” And my mom has been a vegetarian for most of my life. These things are all true.

I can’t even believe I am writing this right now but I was up all night with my stomach killing me and also I had seen The Purge 2: Anarchy and I guess I needed to purge in a healthy way. I became a vegetarian because I needed a way of ordering my eating in a less harmful way. I needed something to focus on that didn’t involve bringing my guts up every day. I thought I would only be a vegetarian for a year but it seems to be sticking. I am finding better ways to change my body. My body is not a problem. My body is my body and I am ready to live in this body without keeping it a prison.

Re archaic English—FT's right—the -est ending is for the second person singular (thou) and the -eth is for the third person singular (he/she). See The Wikipedia page on English verbs:

One such form was the third person singular form with the suffix -eth [ǝθ], pronounced as a full syllable. This was used in some dialects rather than the modern -s, e.g. he maketh ("he makes"), he runneth ("he runs"), he goeth ("he goes"). In some verbs, a shortened form -th appears: he hath ("he has"), he doth ("he does"; pronounced as if written duth), he saith or he sayeth ("he says"). The forms hath and doth are found in some proverbs ("Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned", "The lady doth protest too much").

Another set of forms are associated with the archaic second person singular pronoun thou, which often have the ending -est, pronounced as a full syllable, e.g. thou makest ("you make"), thou leadest ("you lead"). In some verbs, a shortened form -st appears: thou hast ("you have"), thou dost ("you do"; rhymes with must). In the case of the verb be, such forms included art (present tense), wast (past), wert (past subjunctive) and beest (present subjunctive; pronounced as two syllables). In all other verbs, the past tense is formed by the base past tense form of the word (e.g. had, did, listened) plus-'st, not pronounced as a full syllable, e.g. thou had'st ("you had"), thou did'st ("you did"), thou listened'st ("you listened"). Modal verbs except must also have -t or -st added to their form, e.g. thou canst ("you can"), thou wilt ("you will"), thou wouldst ("you would"), thou mightst ("you might"), except may, which is thou mayest ("you may").

Really? wrote:
And what does she expect the world to do about her difficulty with climbing stairs AND fitting into elevators? Invent antigravity?

She seems to have made a good living for herself by wallowing in self-pity and then writing about it extensively. A psychiatrist who specializes in eating disorders might help, but then what would she write about?

John D wrote:Usually bus death are caused by very dramatic events such as driving off the road or getting hit by a train. In these cases, seat belts will have limited utility.

Many school-bus injuries occur in roll-overs. In a roll-over, a seat-belt is hugely important, especially when the interior of the vehicle is large. In the recent roll-over in Florida, the injuries came when kids were launched 10 feet across the bus into the fall wall.

John D wrote:Some US states require new buses to have belts. There is NO DATA that shows belts are helpful for buses. In fact, they may actually be more dangerous overall. States that require seat belts are doing so because of pressure from ignorant parents and politicians saying "think of the children."

First, "data" is plural. Second, while there are no prospective or control-group studies (that I know of), post-hoc analysis of crashes has consistently argued in favor of seat-belts in buses. NHTSA came close to mandating three-point belts in buses about 10 years ago, but was "talked" out of it by politicians to avoid the cost.

Okay... so you pick on my misuse of the word data... haha... for that you get a simple "fuck you asshole."

I have posted several articles and government sites that have supported my position. You have posted no proof for your position. I don't think this is on me to prove.

Anyone can come up with "just so" reasons for some circumstances where belts will help in a bus. In a similar way, there are some cases where you are safer in a car crash if you do not have on a belt. You are arguing like a panic stricken parent. Get a clue. When talking about safety we need to choose the most likely failure mode and improve the safety of these modes.

There is a convoluted argument for why the NHTSA may want belts on buses. NHTSA may think that this will make parents more comfortable putting their kids on the bus. So, if parents think buses are safe they will use buses more often... and indeed... this is ultimately the safer choice than using a passenger car. This is a bit odd... but it would not surprise me. This is similar to the security theater at airports. It is all about convincing the stupid public into the idea that flying is safe... and.... for the most part it is.

When I refinanced my mortgage last year, a notary came to my house for all the attendant document-signing. I guesstimate that he weighed between 450 and 500 pounds. Yuge. He commented on how well-built the chairs for my dining table are (part of an antique set, with sideboard and glass-fronted cabinet, ~ 1900-1910 vintage), and how "no one makes furniture like that anymore." :shock:

I'm a middle-aged person, grew up in Texas, and I can only remember one morbidly obese person in our immediate neighborhood back then (1970s). Sure there were always a couple of "fat kids" at school, but they were really just pudgy, and not morbidly obese. There are a lot of morbidly obese people at my university ... in fact they had to add more handicapped parking spaces to accommodate them.

BarnOwl wrote:When I refinanced my mortgage last year, a notary came to my house for all the attendant document-signing. I guesstimate that he weighed between 450 and 500 pounds. Yuge. He commented on how well-built the chairs for my dining table are (part of an antique set, with sideboard and glass-fronted cabinet, ~ 1900-1910 vintage), and how "no one makes furniture like that anymore." :shock:

I'm a middle-aged person, grew up in Texas, and I can only remember one morbidly obese person in our immediate neighborhood back then (1970s). Sure there were always a couple of "fat kids" at school, but they were really just pudgy, and not morbidly obese. There are a lot of morbidly obese people at my university ... in fact they had to add more handicapped parking spaces to accommodate them.

In Michigan it is all about a store called Meijer. Wide isles, tons of handicap parking, and lots of powered wheelchairs. Every time I shop there I spot at least one person who is in the 400 pound range. It is open 24/7 and is a great place to shop at 3:00am. It is like a lunatic shopping party.

Okey-dokey, but I assume that I'll need to get you pdfs of any article in a journal that isn't open-access, correct? And we can skip all secondary arguments, such as making parents feel better and/or teaching kids that they should always be belted when in a vehicle. The key question is whether NHTSA's original idea that "compartmentalization" (i.e., high seat-backs with padding) was really the better way to go than belts. The answer is No. And the reason is roll-overs.

John D wrote:
In Michigan it is all about a store called Meijer. Wide isles, tons of handicap parking, and lots of powered wheelchairs. Every time I shop there I spot at least one person who is in the 400 pound range. It is open 24/7 and is a great place to shop at 3:00am. It is like a lunatic shopping party.

One of the students was telling me about how xe got screamed at for parking in a handicapped space at work, because it was supposedly reserved for disabled veterans. Student was on crutches with two broken ankles at the time and was trying to make it to an exam on time - it was a couple of years ago, and I remember xir being on crutches, but I can't remember how xe broke the ankles. Possibly MVA or sports-related, but in any case, xe was upset by being screamed at.

BarnOwl wrote:Exhausting. :roll: Well, maybe if she had a more mundane job, like many of us, she wouldn't have to worry about "event venues" or "airport seating." And here's an idea ... maybe cut back on the restaurant outings. These things are all privileges. In a xojane essay, she claims to be a vegetarian.

Charles II was not simply the offspring of a first cousin marriage, he was the culmination of a repeated instances of cousin marriage over several generations. Below is a pedigree of Charles’ descent from Philip and Joanna of Castile (the latter being the daughter of the famed Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon & Castile respectively). I have highlighted those ancestors who enter the lineage from the outside, that is, they are introducing relatively “fresh blood.”

As you can see, Charles’ genealogy loops back into itself quite often! Philip & Joanna are Charles’ forebears many times over. This is a problem. To see how, consider if Philip or Joanna carry a deleterious mutation which is recessive in its expression. Presumably their children would be unaffected, because only one of them should carry a rare deleterious mutation, resulting complementation so that one full functional copy is sufficient. But in Charles’ cases both of his parents are descendants of Philip & Joanna, so the probability that he will inherit the same faulty allele from both parents is heightened. The formula for F, the inbreeding coefficient is:
FI = Σ (0.5)i X ( 1 + FA )

To recognize and celebrate with the BBLGBTQUIAAA community, Philadelphia has rolled out a new Pride flag.

“The black and brown stripes are an inclusionary way to highlight black and brown LGBTQIA members within our community,” said one source involved with the flag-raising event who asked not to be named. “With all of the black and brown activism that’s worked to address racism in the Gayborhood over the past year, I think the new flag is a great step for the city to show the world that they’re working toward fully supporting all members of our community.”

A spokesperson for the event would not confirm the new design, but in a statement described the flag reveal as “a special, can’t-be-missed unveiling and raising of a brand-new Pride flag which promises to be a step toward inclusivity, to spur dialogue within the community, and to impact the worldwide conversation.”

The arrival of a more inclusive pride flag is another sign of visible progress over the past six months in the city’s LGBTQ community. In January, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (PCHR) mandated that Gayborhood bars and nonprofits comply with sensitivity trainings after community complaints of racial discrimination emerged last year. In February, the Mayor’s Office named Amber Hikes, a black queer woman, as the executive director of the Office of LGBT Affairs and finally announced the members of the new Commission on LGBT Affairs, whose leadership ranks are primarily people of color. Last month, City Council unanimously passed a bill, prompted by Gayborhood racism concerns, that will give PCHR the power to issue “cease-operations orders” to businesses found to engage in a pattern of discrimination; Mayor Jim Kenney later confirmed that he would sign it into law.

The original six-color rainbow Pride flag was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978; he died in March at age 65. Although there have been several variations of the flag in the past that highlighted specific identities within the LGBTQ spectrum, this will be the first time a major institution has ever modified the flag as a way to highlight racial diversity within it.

This was probably a good compromise until it's finally decided to kick G out of the LGBTQUIAA as well as the cis white LBs.